Post Judgment
by CzechChicka
Summary: Setting after T3. Ever wonder what happened after Judgment Day? John Conner and Kate Brewster begin the adventure. WARNING: Spoilers! CH 1 RR! ON HOLD!
1. Out of the Ashes

Post Judgment  
  
Summary: John and Kate have survived Judgment Day. Now they are faced with the task of building an army, defeating the machines, and finding the time machine. Even knowing the future can't help these two in their times of hardship.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own terminator, just this plot.  
  
Chapter 1: Out of the Ashes  
  
We thought we could stop it. We thought we could end it before it began. But, as the terminator told us, it was inevitable. We had only postponed it. We were never meant to stop it. It wasn't just Cyberdine. It was more that just Sky Net. It was all of cyberspace. Every computer, machine, internet connection, virus, everything...  
  
Brewster lied to us. He said we could stop it. He said the main computer was at Crystal Point. We believed him.  
  
My mother always lived by her motto: No fate but what we make. She believed we could stop it. We could start anew. I would never have to carry such a burden.  
  
She was wrong.  
  
We were never meant to stop it.  
  
We were meant to survive it.  
  
Judgment Day  
  
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"Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?" The speaker from the control panel fizzed. John cast a wary eye toward the microphone, and then turned to Kate. She nodded.  
  
"Hello? I repeat, is there anyone there?" Panic filled the speaker's voice. Again, John hesitated, and then pressed the button on the receiver.  
  
"This is John Conner," he said softly.  
  
"Conner, who's in charge,?" demanded the speaker. John's voice cracked as he answered, finally accepting his fate.  
  
"I am."  
  
But the speaker never heard those two words. Screaming erupted from the microphone, and then the contact died altogether. Static.  
  
The first explosion.  
  
BOOM! The 30-year-old computers vibrated, turned on and off repeatedly, finally short circuiting. The microphone fell from the control panel. Every glass door shattered, and a small crack appeared in the blast doors. They held. Kate rushed up to John and held him, never letting go. John held on too. They were finally catching up to the future.  
  
BOOM! The second explosion sounded fainter, far off. More glass shattered, but still the blast doors held. He felt tears on his shoulder. Kate's tears. She was loosing so much, while John lost nothing. It wasn't fair.  
  
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The explosions were very faint this time, but still audible. The control panel shook. Static appeared on every screen. The shaking became more and more violent, until it, too, short circuited. Tears had now formed in Johns eyes, and he held onto Kate even tighter. This was it; this was the end.  
  
The explosions continued for nearly an hour. The air stank with the stench of radiation and death (A/N: Ok, so technically, you can't smell radiation. Sue me. :-P). Inside his head, John could hear the screaming. The terrified, panicked screams of the three billion people who had long been destined to die. Finally, at long last, it stopped.  
  
Kate, her body wracked with sobs, pulled away from John. John, too, let go and hung his head. All these years, he had thought this day would never have to come. No, that wasn't true; deep inside, he had always had the nagging fear that someday, they would meet fate. Deep down, he had always known, yet he had done nothing to prevent it. It was all his fault.  
  
No. Insisted a voice in his head. No, you did all you could. It was inevitable.  
  
He looked up at Kate, who was sitting on the cold, hard metal steps staring into empty space. He had to tell her now. He cautiously walked over to her and sat down next her, avoiding the eyes of his future wife.  
  
"Kate," he said, "I'm going to tell you everything."  
  
And he did. He told her everything. How his mother, Sarah Conner, had been targeted before he was born. How his father, Kyle Reese, had yet to be born. How the terminators had tried again when he was 13. How they had shut down Cyberdine. How he was destined to be a world leader. How she was supposed to be his lieutenant, 2nd in command. Everything.  
  
"Wow," was all she could say when she heard all this. There was a long, awkward silence.  
  
"So...," John said, breaking the silence.  
  
"You were really brave, you know," commented Kate. John shook his head.  
  
"Nah, you were better-"  
  
"No, I mean when-when I didn't even have a part in this. Saving your mother, cracking security at Cyberdine, I would never be able to do that." John laughed.  
  
"Well, missy, if the terminator was right, you're going to have to do a lot more than that." More silence. Kate looked into John's eyes, and John looked back. Her eyes were so beautiful. So warm and inviting. He moved closer to her, closing his own eyes...  
  
CLANK! John's pistol fell out of his makeshift backpack and onto the floor next to their feet. They pulled away, blushing, and John replaced the pistol in his pack, not looking at Kate.  
  
"So, think we should go and search for provisions?" he suggested.  
  
"What, huh?" replied Kate, jerking out of her thoughts.  
  
"You know food, water, the works? We're probably going to be here a long time."  
  
"Oh, yea." Kate stood up quickly. "This way."  
  
Kate led them through a thick steel door and down endless sets of stairs. John followed a little farther behind, wincing every time he put any weight on his right leg. After a few minutes, they emerged into a small, musty room piled high with boxes upon boxes of canned foods. Through another door they came to the freezer, which was piled high with frozen beef, turkey, chicken, and sausage. Through yet another door they found hundreds of gas masks piled in boxes, and every kind of weapon you could imagine pinned up against the walls. Ammunition lay plentiful amid the boxes of gas masks.  
  
"Bingo," said John, a smile growing on his face.  
  
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There, first chapter up. A little depressing, I know, but it's nothing compared to what the third movie was like. Anyway, please review (see little box in the left corner). Flames welcome!!  
  
~*~Ze Czech~*~ 


	2. The Aftermath

Post Judgment  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own terminator. Duh.  
  
The Aftermath  
  
Kate stood precariously at the bottom of a huge stockpile of frozen meats. She shook her head in disgust. Kate, an ardent vegetarian (A/N: I don't remember if she's that serious in the movies, but it'll be important later on.), thought that if slaughtering helpless animals was a sin, whoever arranged to have this much meat had bought a one-way ticket to the downstairs room. She didn't even want to touch it, but someone had to check the food supply, and John had already claimed weapons detail. Lucky her.  
  
Kate took a step closer to the pile, selected a white cardboard box that read: Meats Poultry-Turkey, and carried away from the pile. She shivered. The room she was in was more like a giant freezer, although it probably wasn't as cold as it should have been. Kate supposed that the motor had stalled in the blasts, and was in the process of re-freezing the room.  
  
Kate was in the middle of prying open the box when she heard some commotion coming from the other room. She noticed, while trying to suppress a laugh, the sound of metal hitting the floor, and distinctly heard the word "shit". She giggled, and turned back to her work. For a box of meet, there was an awful lot of packaging. She plugged her nose while plucking out the Styrofoam, waiting for the stench of spoiled meat, because she was sure that thirty years of storage would have ruined it. But, under the Styrofoam was peanut packaging. She could feel the hair on the back of her neck prickle, and she had a surge of suspicion. It was as if it was a box full of delicate vases. She brushed her hand through the peanuts. Nothing.  
  
Panic struck; no food! Ok, so she didn't eat meat anyway. There were other people that needed it. And, according to John, the nuclear war had practically wiped out everything. Every scrap counted.  
  
Breathing quickly, she seized another box; beef this time. She ripped it open and scrounged through the packaging. Nothing.  
  
Box after box after box...nothing. They had nothing. They were going to starve. Wait! Her thoughts flew to the canned food in the adjacent room. Surely nobody had touched those, right?  
  
Jumping to her feet, she sprinted into the left-hand room. Shelves, this time, laden with cans upon cans upon cans of everything you could imagine. Corn, peas, peaches, pumpkin pie, trail mix, pineapple, and so on (A/N: Disgusting, I know. You should see some of the things my school serves. All canned, of course. Blach.). Kate gave a sigh of relief. She grabbed a nearby can of corn, just to make sure it was real. Solid enough, she thought. She turned it over in her hands, relishing in the thought...  
  
Something at the top of the can caught her eye. She pulled it closer to her face.  
  
"Shit."  
  
The can had obviously been opened. There clear as day, an outlined circle, smeared on the edges with crazy glue. This day just got better and better. She grabbed another can: opened. Panic rising again, she grabbed can after can, throwing them behind her in disgust. Great, just great!  
  
She heard, again, from the same room as before, metal crashing to the floor. Again, she distinguished the word "shit". Curiosity overcame her, and she made her way over to the room containing the weapons; the room John was in.  
  
"Shit, shit, and shit!!!" he cried in rage as she entered. She walked up to him cautiously with the idea of calming him down, when she suddenly found her self face-to-face with the cement. She'd slipped on something on the ground. Rubbing her forehead, she got to her feet and looked at the floor. It was littered with little red cartridges that ended in metal. She guessed this was some kind of ammunition, though she wasn't well versed on the subject.  
  
"God, I'm gonna kill somebody! Who did this?! Idiots!" John was still screaming his head off, throwing the boxes of ammunition on the floor. One of them came dangerously close to hitting her in the head.  
  
"John? JOHN!" she shouted, bringing her raging partner out of his fury. He turned to her, an angry look on his face.  
  
"Look," he said simply, handing her a box. She opened it, only to find more of the little red cartridges. She couldn't see anything wrong with it. Kate gave John a curious look, but he just gestured toward the box again. She turned it to its side. 'Winchester Pheasant Shot' it read. Ok, so it was hunting shot, but it would still work. Again, Kate looked at John with a curious look.  
  
"So?" John sighed at this.  
  
"It's pheasant shot. So, number one, even if we had a shotgun, it would do precisely squat," he explained.  
  
"Wait a minute, there are plenty of guns. Couldn't you just use them?" she asked. Instantly she regretted those words, sensing that it was a stupid suggestion.  
  
"Do you see any shotguns?" pressed John, "Rifles, machine guns, bazookas, ect, ect, and ect. These are hunting shots. They're too big for the guns, and I doubt they'd even penetrate goose skin."  
  
Kate dropped the box. Someone knew. Somebody knew they were here, or were going to be here. Someone who didn't want them to survive. They had no food, no water, and no defenses. They were stranded in the middle of nowhere. They were going to die.  
  
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Wow! I can't even count how many reviews I got! Thanks a lot!!!! I feel sooooooooo loved….shutting up. Sorry it took so long to update, I am such a procrastinator! Next chapter: scouring for survivors.  
  
Questions:  
  
Margo: The almost kiss could've waited, I know, but I couldn't help it, lol! I thought since there was so much emotional distress and junk that they needed comfort. Plus, there won't be another one for a really, really long time. And Kate knew the way to the supplies because she has been there before. She was there once, with her father. That's all I'm gonna say for now, except that she was really little at the time.  
  
Streetsim: I think this chapter answers your question. But, if I really did put existent meet in this story, it would have been frozen and vacuum sealed. The most it would have gotten was freezer burn.  
  
K9: Hee hee, I never thought about explaining about the scar. Thanks for the idea!!!  
  
Swthart: *Blushes* Thanks!!! I hope my bio didn't scare you too much.  
  
Also, thanks to Excalibur Z, Midnight Dove, Punk-Freak-123, isilme, ironwolf, Marla Gilmore, Mike999, jun_iper, MetChick01, Fanboy24, matt13086, Tom green, GS335, China-boy, BowlingForSoup(love that band!!!), Starrika and eska*ai*tenshi for reviewing!!!  
  
Peace out…  
  
~*~Ze Czech~*~ 


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